


How to Make Thin Space Hamster

by AtypicalOwl



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Crack, Cute Animals, Fluff, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-02
Updated: 2014-09-02
Packaged: 2018-02-15 19:54:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2241429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtypicalOwl/pseuds/AtypicalOwl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Commander Shepard called for her help, Samantha Traynor was not expecting the situation she found him in, and she definitely wasn't expecting to bond with him over a mutual fondness for small, furry creatures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Make Thin Space Hamster

Samantha Traynor surveyed the scene in front of her, rubbed her eyes, and blinked several times, but the image did not change. She was forced to accept that either she was going crazy, or her commanding officer was indeed stuck from the waist up in a bulkhead.

This was _not_ how she pictured her afternoon going after EDI informed her that Shepard required her immediate assistance in the cargo deck.

“Commander Shepard?” Samantha asked hesitantly.

Shepard jumped, or rather, his lower half twitched, and the man’s cussing echoed oddly through the walls. “Specialist, is that you?”

“Yes. Um…”

“Please tell me it’s just you.”

“Specialist Traynor is alone,” EDI said over the intercom.

There was a thud, possibly Shepard banging his head against something. Samantha thought she heard him mumble something about how you’re never alone with an AI. “EDI, could you just… Log me out or something? I really don’t need more witnesses.”

“Logging you out, Commander.”

“Witnesses to what, exactly?”

Shepard was silent for a moment, before he admitted, “I’m stuck.”

Samantha was momentarily grateful that he was stuck with his head in the wall, so he couldn’t see her cover her mouth and briefly shake with silent laughter. “May I ask how you came to be in this situation, sir?”

“You may ask, but I would prefer if you would work on getting me out!” Shepard snapped. He braced his legs against the bulkhead and pushed, but his upper half didn’t seem to move.

Samantha eyed the access panel sitting innocently on the floor next to the commander. Judging from the size of it, she was surprised that he had managed to get his torso in the space in the first place.

Still, not the weirdest situation she had ever found herself in. Hopefully they wouldn’t need to break her toothbrush again. “Okay, how can I help?”

“Just. Pull.” Shepard braced his feet against the wall again, preparing for another push.

That left Samantha wondering just what, exactly, she was supposed to pull, because she had a mental image of grabbing him by the feet and yanking until he popped out. Somehow, she thought that asking him where to grip wouldn’t be received well in his current mood. She flailed around aimlessly for a moment before making a decision, seizing Shepard’s belt and praying to every deity of every species that she was not about to accidentally de-trouser her commanding officer.

“Okay,” Shepard said, “On the count of three, pull, I’ll push, and we can all forget this ever happened.”

EDI chimed in. “If you anticipate remembering this event will be a problem, I can preserve the records in the Normandy’s archives.”

“Log me out!” Shepard yelled at the same time Samantha said “Please no, EDI!”

“Logging you out, Commander.”

Shepard planted his feet more firmly, and began counting. “Three, two, one, NOW!”

Samantha pulled with all her might, and Shepard strained against the bulkhead. A fleeting mental image of Shepard as Winnie the Pooh, stuck in a rabbit hole, crossed Samantha’s mind. Oh bother.

Something shifted. At first, Samantha thought they had succeeded in getting Shepard unstuck from the wall. She redoubled her efforts and _yanked._

The resistance she was pulling against suddenly released, and Samantha fell backwards before she realized she could stop pulling. She laid on the floor for a moment before her brain caught up and she realized that Shepard wasn’t also on the floor with her.

Her hand was still on his belt, though.

“Specialist Traynor…” Shepard’s voice said evenly.

Samantha closed her eyes and tried to steadfastly _not_ think about what she was going to see when she opened them. “Yes, Commander?”

“You’re going to have to stop freaking out and help me, you know that.”

“Yes, Commander.”

“Commander Shepard, would you like me to request additional assistance?” EDI asked?

“NO!” Samantha and Shepard yelled simultaneously. “Log me out! And keep me logged out!” Shepard added.

Neither of them said anything for a while after that, Shepard still stuck, Samantha still on the floor with her eyes closed. Finally, Shepard broke the silence.

“We can agree to never speak of this again later, but for now… Can we please continue with extracting me from the wall?”

“Yes, Commander.”

Samantha finally convinced her eyes to open, and the situation at hand was exactly the way she had imagined it: One Shepard, still stuck in the wall. One pair of trousers, in her hand, not attached to their owner any more.

And, in front of her, the answer to the question that had pervaded ship gossip since the times when ships only sailed the ocean: Boxers or briefs?

Neither, as it turns out. Commander Shepard was apparently a bikini brief kind of man.

Samantha supposed it was better than finding out he was Commando Shepard.

“Well, maybe we should work backwards. How did you get in there in the first place?” Samantha stood up and examined the hole, choosing to focus on the half of her commander that was still mostly clothed, even if most of said half was still inside the Normandy’s bulkhead.

Shepard grunted. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m just asking because this hole doesn’t look that big. I rather can’t believe you got inside it in the first place.”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures, Traynor.”

Samantha pulled up a program on her omnitool and started taking measurements of the bulkhead. “That doesn’t really clear it up.”

“Desperate. Times.”

Samantha rolled her eyes and went back to her omnitool program, comparing the dimensions of the access panel and the bulkhead’s width to measurements in Shepard’s medical file.

“Samantha?” Shepard asked. His voice sounded strained and pleading. “You still there?”

“Still here, just figuring out how to get your ridiculous self out of this situation without calling Tali in here to cut the bulkhead open.”

Shepard groaned. “The fewer people that know about this, the better.”

“Okay, I think I’ve got it.” Samantha shut off her omnitool and turned her attention back to Shepard. “According to my calculations, your shoulders are simply wider than this panel is.”

Shepard slumped. Well, his lower half slumped, Samantha had no idea what his upper half was doing.

“Fortunately, geometry is on our side.” Samantha stepped closer to Shepard, ignoring his posterior with a great force of will. “Lift your left shoulder, please.”

Shepard shifted and reported that the shoulder was lifted.

“Okay, now twist a little, put the right side down…” Samantha continued giving Shepard directions, talking him through contorting his body into a position that would hopefully allow him out of the hole.

After a minute, Samantha decided it was as good as they were going to get. “Okay, now try backing out while you hold this position.”

“I think my ribs are cramping,” Shepard complained, but he pushed anyway. This time, he actually moved, pulling most of his torso out. “Woo!” He cried happily.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, we still have to get your shoulders out,” Samantha said. Let me just see…” She patted his back, just under his left shoulder, to let him know where she was, then felt around the edge of the hole. “Okay, just lift this side again, and pull.” Samantha seized a fistful of his shirt and tugged too.

She didn’t know why she was expecting a comedic suction cup sound when Shepard finally popped free, but Samantha was vaguely disappointed when it was just a small thud.

Shepard gave up on trying to stand and just sat down next to the newly-vacated access panel, slowly lowered his arms to his sides, wincing and rolling his shoulders.

“How long were you stuck like that?” Samantha asked.

“Maybe half an hour before I gave up and had EDI call you,” Shepard admitted.

“Actually, Commander, it was twenty-five minutes and forty-three seconds.” EDI said.

Shepard only had to glare in the general direction of the ceiling before EDI said “Logging you out, Commander.”

“I don’t know why she still does all that ‘login’ crap these days,” Shepard said, shaking his head. “I swear she’s messing with us.”

“Undoubtedly, Commander.”

“Specialist Traynor?”

“Yes, Commander?”

“May I have my pants back, please?”

Samantha then realized that she had not actually let go of Shepard’s trousers. She squeaked and threw them in his general direction before turning around and covering her reddening face with her hands.

There was a rustling of fabric. “You can turn around now.”

Samantha did. Shepard was trousered once more, thank goodness. There were probably lots of people in the galaxy who would kill to see Commander Shepard sans trousers, but she was emphatically not one of them.

“So. Um. Considering the fact that it’s generally Tali and Gabby who do the vent-crawling, may I ask what, exactly, you were attempting to accomplish?”

Much to Samantha’s amusement, Shepard turned red. “Well…” He stopped, and cocked his head. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Shh.”

Samantha listened. Part of what made her such a good communications tech was her hearing; she prided herself on her ability to mentally separate signal from noise without using software, or to pick up on faint sounds without needing to seek and amplify them. She put those skills to good use now, straining her ears for whatever it was that Shepard had heard.

_A faint rustling, tiny claws scrabbling on metal, squeak._

Squeak?

Samantha closed her eyes, this time gathering her patience rather than fighting mortification. “Shepard, please tell me that’s not your hamster.”

“I _could_ tell you that, but I would be breaking my rule about being honest with my crew.”

Samantha opened her eyes, fixing her commander with an even stare. “You got stuck in the bulkhead because you were chasing your hamster.”

“Yep.”

“Why exactly is your hamster in a Normandy bulkhead and not safely in its cage?”

Shepard refused to look at Samantha. “I’ll tell you if you help me get him out _and_ promise not to laugh when it’s over.”

“Fine.”

After all that fuss, the actual retrieval of the hamster was rather anticlimactic. Samantha had a much easier time fitting into the access panel than Shepard, and it was a simple matter of poking her head in, locating the hamster by light of her omni-tool, scooping him up, and ducking back out. She was quite grateful that the ship’s air filters prevented dust from accumulating anywhere in the ship.

The little hamster squirmed in her grasp, and she gently cupped her hands around him to prevent his escape. His fur was a bit rumpled from his escapades. She ran a gentle finger down his back to smooth it, and he squeaked softly before relaxing.

“Here we are, safe and sound,” Samantha said, standing up. She moved to hand the hamster to Shepard, but he held a hand up to stop her.

“He seems to like you. Would you mind holding on to him until we get him back in his cage? I don’t want him to run off again.”

“Sure thing, Commander.” The hamster was nuzzling her fingers now, and Samantha melted a little bit inside. It was _adorable_ , with its little black eyes and soft fur and legs tucked underneath it. She knew that when her shift ended, she was going to spend an embarrassingly long time squeeing into her pillow and searching for pictures of cute and fluffy things on the extranet.

Shepard led her to the elevator and allowed her to get on first before he pushed the button for his personal cabin.

“So, I do have one question about everything that just happened,” Samantha said as the elevator got underway. Was it the lighting in the elevator, or had Shepard just turned a bit red?

“Ask away, Specialist,” he said.

“What’s your hamster’s name?”

Shepard blinked. “That’s not the question I was expecting.”

“Well, you can’t expect me to have gone through all of that and not even know the name of the poor little fluffy guy I was rescuing.” Samantha scratched the hamster under his little chin, holding him up for emphasis.

Shepard laughed. “You already know the name of the guy you rescued! John Shepard!”

Samantha shot him a bemused look, then stared pointedly at the top of his head. “Commander, you have a buzz cut. ‘Fluffy’ is not an adjective that is appropriate to describe you.”

The elevator opened, depositing the both of them in front of the commander’s cabin. Shepard paused to key in his access code, and the door slid open. “Hamtaro,” he said, as they entered.

“What?”

“My hamster. I named him Hamtaro.”

Samantha stopped next to the empty fish tank and gave him a blank look.

“You know, from the cartoon? Animated hamsters eating sunflower seeds and running around having adventures?” Shepard rolled his eyes. “Nevermind. Let’s get Hamtaro back where he belongs.”

Samantha was almost reluctant to place Hamtaro back in his little cage. He had fallen asleep in her hands, head tucked under a paw, and it was tugging at her heartstrings. Still, she knew it wouldn’t be the best thing to kidnap her commander’s pet just because it was heart-meltingly cute. She made a mental note to find a way to get him a bigger cage to run around in. Maybe Tali would help her make one out of engineering scraps?

Shepard secured the lid on the hamster’s cage and stepped back. For a brief moment, Samantha saw a warm, goofy grin split Shepard’s face as he stared at Hamtaro, watching him snuggle into the artificial wood chips that lined the bottom of the cage. It wasn’t a look she had ever seen him wear before. All the worries of the Reaper War were gone, the hard lines etched into his face briefly softened by affection for a cute and fluffy animal.

Then Shepard seemed to remember Samantha was there, he shook his head slightly and turned to her, and the moment was gone. “Thanks for your help, Specialist. I’d put you in for a commendation if I didn’t think Anderson would chew me out for losing Hamtaro in the first place.” He grinned, and she knew she was kidding.

“No problem, Commander. It was nice to have a break from routing encrypted transmissions, anyway.” She looked at Hamtaro’s cage again. It seemed pretty secure. “How did he end up down in Engineering, anyway? It doesn’t look like he would be able to get out of there.”

It wasn’t her imagination or the lighting this time, Shepard really did turn red. “Well, uh… Specialist Traynor, what I’m about to say _does not leave this room_ , are we clear?”

She nodded.

“It was, uh, my fault. I did something stupid.” At Samantha’s raised eyebrow, he elaborated. “I had him out of his cage for an experiment, and he ran away. Since I found him in Engineering once before, I figured I’d try down there, and then I heard the squeaking in the bulkhead, and the rest is history.”

Samantha crossed her arms and frowned. “Okay, back up. What kind of experiment were you going to run on your _hamster?_ Please tell me it wasn’t something Javik suggested.”

Shepard held up his hands in defense. “No no, of course not! I would never let him anywhere _near_ Hamtaro, especially not after what happened to the fish!” It _did_ seem odd that the large, luxurious fishtank set into the wall was completely empty… “No, I was, uh… Oh _damn_ , there is no way I can explain this without making a huge idiot of myself.” He scrubbed his face with his hands in frustration. “Okay, promise you won’t think any less of me if I admit a huge weakness for small, cute animals.”

Samantha couldn’t help it, she laughed. “Commander, I just had to pull you out of an access panel because you were chasing your runaway hamster. I think we’ve gotten past that issue already.” She got her laughter under control. “But no, I promise I don’t think you’re any less of a tough soldier and inspirational leader just because you like cute and fluffy things.”

Shepard let out a deep sigh. “Okay. Well, there’s this extranet video that I thought was cool…” He activated his omnitool and typed a few commands, then the screen on his desk lit up. “Here it is,” he said, pointing to it.

On the screen, a very sleepy and content Earth hamster laid in someone’s palm. The person’s other hand was gently stroking its back, relaxing the hamster even more, until it looked like a little furry pancake. The video was titled “How to Make Thin Hamster”.

Shepard and Samantha watched the video in silence, both basking in the cuteness of the hamster pancake. When it ended, Samantha turned to him and said, “You tried that with Hamtaro, didn’t you?”

He nodded, an embarrassed grimace on his face. “Yeah. He wasn’t fond of it.”

“So you got yourself stuck in a bulkhead because you were trying to imitate an extranet video of a cute hamster.”

He nodded again.

She turned back to the screen, where the video site was still displayed, and gestured to it. “I’ve seen that video before, and the description clearly states that it only works on Earth hamsters.”

Shepard winced.

“Therefore, in light of your mistake, I think it’s only fair that I tell you about the time I ended up in the hospital with anaphylactic shock because of a video about a cat and a box.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> The "How to Make Thin Hamster" video can be viewed [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-0HRs0FY2U).


End file.
